The Gifts He'd Given
by Jenwryn
Summary: Hermione/Severus, Hermione/Harry. AU. Hermione and Severus are happy but a shadow from their past haunts them both. Marriage Law Fic, but in a wandering way. I've altered the events of HP&DH shamelessly, no epilogue. Quiet, moody fic. R&R. COMPLETE.
1. Snow

_Disclaimer:__ All publicly recognisable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended. __Not beta read; don't jinx.

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**Chapter One: Snow**

Memories are like snowflakes.

Hermione had read that in a book once and it had never made much sense to her. How exactly was a memory supposed to be like a snowflake? In which way? If you touched a snowflake it dissolved into a circle of dampness against your skin. Did that mean that the harder you clung to a memory, the quicker it evaporated? Was that how the metaphor worked? Hermione didn't know but, despite the fact that not knowing something was usually abhorrent to her, at that moment she didn't much care.

"Kitty!" she shouted and her raised voice sounded unspeakably loud out here in the empty grounds. Her daughter turned and gazed at her with wide-eyed surprise from behind a mass of pitch-black hair and then held out the shiny purple stone that she'd picked up from the snow with her gloved fingers, eager for her mother's inspection of it.

Hermione could hear her heart pounding but she smiled gently, squatting down towards the snow – she could feel the icy chill of it rise up against her through her jeans, despite the heavy woollen leggings she had on beneath – and said calmly, "Oh, that's pretty isn't it sweetheart?"

The little girl nodded, then dropped the pebble into the depths of one of her pockets and continued to walk happily along the shoreline of the frozen lake. Hermione stood slowly and then followed at her daughter's heels. She was furious at herself for having reacted like that. It was just a pebble, just a chunk of harmless rock. Kitty wasn't a blathering idiot – she wasn't going to shove it down her throat like a moron. And nobody had been out here in advance jinxing pretty pebbles in the hope that her little girl was going to pick them up. Hermione sighed and realised she was getting as paranoid as Severus. It was too much time in his company that was to blame. He was so damn convinced that half the Wizarding world was out to kill them – a conviction which wasn't entirely ungrounded, she had to admit, what with the intermittent troublemaking of former Death Eaters and the various personal enemies that they'd both managed to make themselves. But still... Merlin's beard, he wouldn't even eat food made by a house elf except his own! Hermione had never noticed it before they'd married, but even his meals in the Great Hall arrived just a fraction different from everyone else's. Oh, and how she'd loathed his precautions in the beginning. It had been just another way to emphasise her segregation from the life she'd known before their marriage.

And now here she was, barking at Kitty in a perfect imitation of the girl's father. Hermione wasn't sure if the realisation made her want to laugh or smack herself in the head. In the end, of course, she did neither, but sighed again softly and gazed out across the gleaming surface of the frozen lake. It had stared snowing since they'd come outside for a spot of fresh air. The dungeons probably weren't the best place for a child to grow up, but after four and a half years it didn't even occur to Hermione anymore to ask that they relocate – the dungeons were a part of Severus and so, by extension, had become a part of her. Nevertheless, she couldn't deny that the crisp fresh air was pleasant, even if it did bite at her lips with its cold. And Kitty looked so happy that it seemed silly to let a bit of white wetness blowing down softly on their faces and melting in their hair defeat them. Still, the young witch leant slightly and pulled the hood of Kitty's cloak up over the girl's head, tucking the busy dark mane in beneath it. Kitty stood patiently under her mother's administrations, then Hermione patted her a last time on the head and released her to continue scampering in the snow.

Hogwarts was, rather ironically given the percentage of children its walls housed, a decidedly strange place to have a family in Hermione's opinion. Sure, she knew it wasn't unheard of for teachers to have their families there (she'd read it in _Hogwarts: A History_), but it was still large and cold and populated with ghosts and moving statues and – and none of that bothered Kitty in the least. Why would it? The inside of Hogwarts, and daytrips into Hogsmeade, were all she really knew. One time, almost lost in the memories of her busy little life, there had been a visit to her grandparents' house. They had been friendly and had fed her ice cream, but the paintings had been rude and not moved _even once_. The pictures hanging amongst the bookshelves in the rooms that Kitty called home, on the other hand, smiled and winked and chattered, and sometimes they even told her bedtime stories if her father was too busy. Mm, all except the old man in green, with the snakes. He just said meany stuff, but Kitty always poked her tongue out at him like her mother had taught her and then he'd get in a huff and stomp off out of sight. Her Dad found it amusing and said it would be an irony if the girl ended up in Salazar's House like he hoped she would.

So, if Hermione thought it was an odd place to bring up a child, then her daughter didn't seem to have noticed.

Abruptly Kitty stopped. She seemed suddenly to decide that she'd had enough of their walk, gave her mother an intent look, and raised her arms expectantly. Hermione smiled as if she didn't know what the girl was about, and asked, "What would you like, pumpkin?"

The girl looked mildly irritated. "Pick Kitty up?"

Hermione hated it when her daughter spoke about herself in second person, but it was a habit Severus continuously indulged her in. Still, at the very least she could practise her manners. "Pick you up…?"

"Pick Kitty up _please_?" corrected the tiny witch with a quirk of a dimpled smile.

Hermione smiled back. "Of course I'll pick you up," she confirmed warmly and then scooped the girl up into her arms and swung her around on the spot for good measure, Kitty shrieking in delight and her bright green snow boots gleaming as she span. Then Hermione settled her daughter comfortably against her right hip and shot a critical eye upon the weather. The trees at the edge of the Forbidden Forest had started to shake ominously in the steadily rising wind and the snow was falling denser. She wiped specks of white from her lashes and frowned. "Back home for us, I think." Then she glanced at her watch, "Besides, your Dad'll be in by now."

"Dad," agreed Kitty with contentment, and she nodded like a little empress as her mother turned around and started crunching back towards the shape of Hogwarts Castle rising dark from a world of steadily increasing whiteness…

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_A/N: as always, I really love comments of all varieties! And if you want to thrash it out about the Hermione/Severus pairing, why don't you head over to my "__Twitch The Mind" forum where I've got a thread on them! Yes, this whiny little fan fic author wants to know why you love or loathe it... though presumably you must at least tolerate it or you wouldn't have read to the bottom of the chapter, hmm? __Huggles, Jen._


	2. A Careless Word

_With thanks to everyone who reviewed the first chapter or put this story on alert: people, I adore you. And also with a special grin in the direction of __sylphides, who rightly enough set me to thinking a little more about the world of the three-and-a-bit year old... Anyway, __I hope you all like how the story continues!_

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**Chapter Two: A Careless Word**

Hermione put her daughter down as soon as they entered their rooms and then began the convoluted process of unwrapping her. The girl's unusual silence from when she'd been out at the lake gave way in the warmth of their home and now she chattered loudly about when the students would return to Hogwarts from holidays, and if she could have a cat of her own for Christmas, and what about going to visit Professor Minerva please? Flecks of snow fell to the floor her mother removed Kitty's cloak and parka and gloves and scarf - green and silver, as though the girl were already sorted into Slytherin – and Kitty sneezed and giggled at the feel of the wool tickling beneath her nose. Then she stuck out her legs one by one and watched intently as her mother tugged the slippery green boots from her feet. Free at last, she scampered over the fireplace to where Crookshanks lay sleeping.

The young witch shot the mis-matched pair a wry glance and then lay the small bundle of Kitty's clothes onto a shelf beside the door. The shelf itself belonged to a bookcase, naturally – what else in the Snape home? – but had been left clear for that purpose, else Severus went into fits of irritation at her tossing things over the back of the chairs near the fireplace. She tidied the clothes slightly, mainly so that they would air properly, and was just reaching hands up to her own scarf when fingers, toasty warm from having stayed indoors, brushed gently against her neck and started unwinding the soft length of green mohair. "You're late, Madam Snape," murmured her husband's voice against her ear and she leant back in against him slightly and let him take the scarf. He folded it neatly and placed it on the shelf beside Kitty's things, then helped his wife from her thick cloak and hung it on a hook near a medieval tapestry illustrating the epic of Gilgamesh. "I trust you have a satisfactory excuse?"

She smiled and turned to face him, his arms sliding around her hips as she moved. "Does your daughter's stubborn instance that we walk as far as the lake rate as satisfactory in your estimation?"

He glanced over at Kitty, who was intent on petting a twitchy but mostly-asleep Crookshanks with the cautious respect of someone who'd borne the brunt of his foul-mannered old age before, and a smile slipped into his eyes. "It might," he conceded shortly, "Though I don't know why you indulge her in these long tramps all over the place in the middle of winter. Anyone would think you liked being out in the snow and ice."

Hermione shrugged, hands resting loosely against his shoulders, fingers picking a stray hair from his robes. "Could be. Everyone knows I have a weakness for cold things that melt when you hold them."

"Why do I get the impression from your tone that that's supposed to be metaphoric for something?" he inquired dryly.

"I haven't the _slightest_ idea."

He sniffed slightly and gave her a long-suffering look that implied (a) he had no idea what she was talking about, (b) even if he did, it was sentimental nonsense, and (c) he rather liked her sentimental nonsense but would never admit it.

All of which she already guessed, so she limited her self to smiling knowingly and observing, "I'd kill for a cup of tea."

"Far be it for me to drive you to murder," he drawled and returned to his chair by the fireplace. The tea service, inherited from a great grandmother of hers, sat on a low table with stout little legs, where it only just fitted because the rest of the space was loaded high with books. Hermione unlaced her boots, leaving them by the door, and then joined him. She accepted the hot teacup he offered her and sank down into her chair, legs stretched out past Crookshanks and Kitty towards the fire. Pale tendrils of steam rose from her socked feet. Obviously there was a leak in her boots she needed to see to, but that could wait till later. For the moment, she just sipped her tea and sighed in contentment, letting her eyes close.

Severus gazed at her socks in disgust. "Where in the name of Merlin's great aunt did you get those reprehensible things?"

The socks were a bright, cheerful, shamelessly gaudy pink.

She blinked her eyes open, followed his gaze, and chuckled. "Dobby, who else? It's a miracle they match, I suppose. You _know_ I told you that he took up knitting years ago, and of course a house-elf never thinks of much else but clothes when it comes to gift giving, and he does have a certain predilection for socks, I suppose because that was what Harr―" she stopped suddenly and concentrated on her tea. A noticeable chill crept into the room. Kitty paused in her private conversation with Crookshanks and moved her gaze in silence from one of her parents to the other. Severus put down his teacup with exaggerated care, rose to his feet stiffly, and walked silently out of the rounded chamber. Down the hall, Hermione could hear the door of his personal study-cum-laboratory shut with an unpleasant click, and she knew with sinking certainty that that would be the last they'd see of him for the evening.

"Rot!" she snapped in an angry voice and rubbed her face roughly, before darting a quick smile in her daughter's direction as though to reassure her that she wasn't really cross. Kitty looked back down at the old part-Kneazle and started explaining in an agitated little voice that Daddy was actually just awfully busy. Hermione listened for a moment, guilt rising up in her but knowing that there was no way to explain to a three year old what had just happened. She finished her tea quickly then placed the cup down beside her husband's and stood up, saying in her best 'cheerful' voice, "Come on, bub, we may as well get ready for dinner."

She called the house-elf that served them when they didn't dine in the Great Hall. "Just myself and Mistress Kitty tonight, if you'd be so kind, Moppy," she said and the house-elf gave her a sympathetic, fleeting smile and disappeared again with a soft _pop. _Hermione gazed at the empty place where the little creature had vanished from and sighed. There were days when she considered taping scotch-taping her own mouth shut. Or a silencing spell perhaps and be done with it.

Of all the _thoughtless_ things to do, why did she have to go and mention Harry?


	3. Grimmauld Place Memories

_A/N: Hmm, there's a small chance that you might loathe me by the end of this chapter, lol. I certainly hope not, but I just thought I'd mention that I know it's a possibility! More will be explained, obviously, in the next installment. Maybe it's none of it how it seems. On the other hand, maybe it is..._**

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**Chapter Three: Grimmauld Place Memories**

Kitty had already been tucked up snugly in her bed for hours when Hermione slid a bookmark carefully into the tome she reading – close enough to the spine for it not to fall out, but far enough away not to put any pressure on the book – and then placed it on the top of the vertiginous pile on the low table. She gave Crookshanks an inscrutable glance and then stood up, pulling the sash tighter on her dressing-gown because the movement had made cool air creep down her back. For a moment she remained there indecisively, but then she turned and padded her bare feet quietly across the stone floor and down the hall to Severus' study. She knocked firmly, but only the once. Either he would answer or he wouldn't – she knew full well that he would have heard her – and from past experience she'd learnt that more than one knock would be automatically be ignored; when he got into a snit he despised anything that could possibly be classified as adolescent behaviour. Even if she was a grown woman now.

The knock was followed by a long silence and Hermione was about to turn away when the door opened abruptly and her husband looked out, his face sallow in the shadows. "Yes?"

_'Yes?'_ was a step up from '_what?'_ in Severus Speak, so Hermione shrugged her shoulders slightly and explained calmly, "It's late, I thought I'd go to bed. If I read any more Tacitus tonight, I'll fall asleep in my chair."

"Wouldn't be the first time," he muttered gruffly and inside her head she smiled. _Good. Gruffness was good. _But her face remained neutral.

"Well?" he demanded, "You don't need my permission to go to sleep, witch."

Despite herself, now a smile really did creep onto her lips. "Severus... come to bed. You know I sleep poorly on my own."

It was clear that he was about to refuse, but then he rubbed the side of his hand against his temples and let out a low groan. "Oh, very well," he muttered. "I have classes first thing tomorrow anyway. I'll be with you soon."

She gave him a look, clearly disbelieving.

He rolled his eyes upwards in irritation, "Really, I will."

"Thank you," she whispered and then watched as he nodded curtly and returned to finish whatever it was he had been in the middle of doing. The fact that he didn't close the door behind him told her that his bad mood had passed. So she stayed there, leaning against the stonework, her feet freezing into lumps of ice despite the warmth of the fire up the hall, and watched him work. She had always liked to watch him work. Even back when she was younger, and his student, and had spent half her time despising him despite her respect, she had liked to watch him work. It was similiar to being in the presence of a gifted sculptor or painter. His face would tighten into concentration and yet relax at the same time, his hands became extensions of his sinuous brain, and his body moved with almost exaggerated grace between cauldrons and cutting boards. Severus Snape, at his potions, had always been a thing of curious attraction, even before she loved him.

Love, that had come later. Much later.

There was a hiss and a small _pop_ and then he poured the potion with measured movements into a long, slender flask and sealed it shut. He tidied up methodically, washed his hands and dried them with care, murmured for the lights to dim, and finally turned back to the doorway. A good twenty minutes must have passed. She knew full well that he'd known she was there the whole time, but he made as if he hadn't. "I thought you were tired," he observed blandly.

Part of Hermione wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him that she was sorry, tell him that she knew she had a big mouth, tell him that the last thing she had wanted was to remind him about Harry. It was what she would have done back in the beginning, after the period of resentfully hating him had passed and the period of desperately wanting him to like her had begun. But those days were over and she knew her husband well enough now to be certain that dramatically apologetic and self-recriminating gestures would simply send him straight back into the dark mood he'd just surfaced from.

Instead, she arched her eyebrows. "Oh, I am. Exhausted. But I figured that if I went to bed before you, when you finally arrived you'd just push me to the other side and profiteer from all the blanket warming I'd done. This way, we both get to shiver." And she rose onto her toes with the realisation that she couldn't actually feel them anymore.

At first he restricted himself to a low _hmmm_. Then he reached out, brushed a strand of hair from her face, and said with a nod, "What an inspired idea, Hermione. Go warm my side of the bed for me."

The young witch smiled, actually did as she was told for once and, after watching her leave, he turned in the other direction towards the bathroom…

Hermione lay on his side of the bed, her hands tucked up under his pillow and breathing in the scent of him. The sheets and pillows were hers, a fine linen she'd bought on a holiday to Egypt, but the bed was a different matter entirely, oh yes, entirely. The martial bed of Professor and Madam Snape was an ugly complex affair made of dark wood which, after all these years, still made Hermione think of the furniture in Number 12, Grimmauld Place. That wasn't necessarily a good thing. Truth be told she'd never been really happy there in the short time they'd had before it all fell apart into a thousand blood-stained pieces. Sure, there had been lovely moments when they'd been able to put the war out of their minds and almost forget that Voldemort was out there, itching to put their hearts on pikes and march them around the Wizarding world in triumphant parade. Yes, there had been moments of laughter, moments of happiness shared over the meals that Kreacher had prepared for them, so tenderly after he and Harry had undergone their epiphany of reconciliation. There had even been moments of fun, in the days before Ron had gone and got himself killed, gone and notched his name up one more statistic, another good wizard dead at the end of a Death Eater's wand. And then later, when it had all become so painful that they'd sought any form of solace they avaliable, there had been moments of almost_-_peace, lying in Harry's strong arms amidst the sheets of his bed.

But on the whole, she hadn't been happy in Grimmauld Place. The memories of that time brought a bitter taste to her mouth and the fact that the beds were so damn similar had been just another unfortunate reason for the resent she'd felt, so thick and suffocating, when she'd first moved into the dungeons at Hogwarts. Too many dark memories, old and new, had come to haunt her, with the sight of that dark wood.


	4. Child Bride

_A/N: This story going mental before my very eyes and there seems to be little I can do to stop it, lol. Not that it wasn't already happening last week but then, just to compound matters, I sat down on the weekend and read an essay (from the HP-Lexicon, which is rapidly becoming my Bible since I discovered it) by Penny Linsenmayer entitled "Partners And Friends", which further infiltrated my brain and made matters even more complicated... Hmm. Anyway, please enjoy this chapter and keep the reviews coming! I don't think I've ever updated stories as rapidly as I'm doing recently: you're all very inspiring! I'm starting to wonder whom I'm shipping though, lol._

_Oh. For the record, there is some really mild language in this chapter (blink and you'll miss it). I think it still fits as T-rating, but I just thought I'd warn you, because I'm paranoid._

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**Chapter Four: Child Bride**

Hermione's eyes had grown heavy again and were fallen almost closed when Severus appeared in their bedroom a short time later as promised. He paused in the doorway, looking at her curled against his pillow, before plunging the chamber into darkness. Then he closed his eyes and opened them again, slowly, so that they adjusted to the pale amber glow from the fireplace, more hot coals set on slumber than anything else.

"Mmha, I was more tired than I thought," she murmured sleepily as she heard him tend to the fire and then slide between the sheets beside her, but she let out a yelp of protest when his hands brushed against her skin as he pulled the blankets up. "Merlin's godmother!" she exclaimed, rolling over and staring at him, suddenly wide awake again, "What did you _do_, wash your hands in melted snow?!"

He raised his eyebrows at her evil look. "The water may have been cold, yes. A well-behaved wife wouldn't complain at such a thing," he observed archly and pressed his hands against her waist.

She let out another squeak but then raised her own eyebrows just as high and retorted, "Oh, of course. How silly of me. Go right ahead and warm your hands, Professor. I'll just warm my feet a little."

He winced as she moved them, still icy despite having been in the sheets for a while, up against his legs. "Hades in hell, woman," he muttered then reached down beneath the blankets and grabbed hold of her feet, pulling them up to his chest level. She moved her knees towards her stomach to be more comfortable, sliding around slightly on her side, and he proceeded to massage the feeling back into her toes. Well. First the pain of pins and needles, actually, then a sort of stinging heat, _then _the feeling, and finally a pleasant warmth. Which was when, of course, his fingers against the sensitive soles of her feet started to tickle. She bit back a giggle, not wanting to disturb him because his face, in the firelight's gleam, had that same concentrated-relaxed look he dedicated to his potions - but in the end, the ticklishness prevailed and a bubble of soft giggles slipped from her despite herself.

He let go of her feet and pulled her closer to him, her knees pressing into his belly. "Don't do that," he reproved sternly.

"Sorry," she said in a most _un_apologetic voice and wriggled her knees out of the way. He'd mentioned repeatedly in the past that he considered giggling to be an obnoxious schoolgirl trait but frankly, so long as he was in a good mood, she didn't take it too seriously. Besides, at the moment there was a gleam in the back of his eyes as he said it, and she rather suspected that there were times when he only snapped out of sheer habit. Not to mention the fact that it wasn't _her _fault if her feet were ticklish. "Mmh, it's late," she murmured feeling sleepy again in the wake of the giggling, "You should sleep. First Years followed by Seventh Years, tomorrow, isn't it?"

"Monday," he considered musingly, "Yes. But you know, there are times when I wonder why I bother at all. Numbskulls, the lot of them. I've only ever had a handful of promising students and not _one_ of them thus far has made profitable use of their knowledge."

She yawned deeply, "Oh, I don't know. I can mix up some mean concoctions when I put my mind to it."

He laughed against her hair, playing with it absently. "I'm _fascinated _by the way you just presume your name must be numbered amongst the promising few."

She shifted her head backwards slightly so she could see him better, looked him straight in the eyes and demanded, "Go on, tell me I wasn't."

He grunted and kissed her on the forehead, "Fine, you little smart-arse. You were the best."

Hermione grinned smugly, quite liking the appellation when it was pronounced by him in that particular silky voice, and leant a little closer to him, her head on the pillow with his. "Sleep," she insisted, but his hands, warm now, moved downwards and found the edge of her nightgown.

Mmm, okay, or _not _sleep.

Dark mood _definitely _lifted…

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Hermione had kept her innocence until the war; until Grimmauld Place. She wasn't like some of the other girls. It wasn't that she was ignorant - how could _she _of all people ever be accused of that? - and nor was she naive, not really - but she'd simply never had the inclination to... _experiment_, that was the term Lavender used. Sure, she'd liked Viktor, but in her own judgement she'd been too young for anything more than what little they'd had and he had been a gentleman. Hermione valued gentlemanliness. 

Certainly, she knew that everyone had made lewd comments about some kind of a _ménage__ à trois_ between herself, Ron and Harry. At the very least it had been murmured that there was something vaguely indecent about a young witch spending so much time in male company. But honestly, she'd never really looked at either of them in that light. If anything, they were more like the brothers she'd never had - until the war, anyway. Real ages had had little to do with it. Sure, Harry was five months younger than Ron, but somehow it was Ron who felt like the little brother who needed coddling, and he brought out her maternal instincts with all their positives and negatives. Whereas Harry, who was almost ten months her junior, was her equal. Not that she thought he was as smart as her, or that she was as brave as him, or even that they were particularly alike but - their individual personalities simply complimented one another so comfortably.

Maybe that was why, on that particularly miserable Autumn day, when she was seventeen and Ron had been dead a month, she and Harry had somehow ended up between the same sheets to keep themselves from shattering into a thousand tiny fragments. The rain had pounded down against grimy windowpanes like tears behind mascara'd lashes and the fog had obscured London from their view as they'd reached silently for each other. The love they'd made was awkward and unschooled but it had soothed their minds in the storm that banked up around them. When he'd asked her to marry him, she'd said yes without a pause. Yes, not because she loved him, though she did in her own way, but because he was some kind of sure sanity in an upside down world. The plain rings upon their fingers were a sort of symbol of the promise that they would keep each other alive, just like they had kept each other breathing during those long, lost, lonely days in Grimmauld Place.

That they would keep each other alive.

What a joke that had been.

Still, even if their time in Grimmauld Place had been brief, and even if the love they'd made had been for unconventional motives - but then, _was _it so unconventional? How many people have made love to prove that they're alive? To try and convince themselves that their life is worth living? To seize a bit of comfort, a bit of peace in the whirlwind of a reality that has their soul in a headlock? And still - and still that love they'd made had protected them and kept them safe and had taught her more about herself than half her years in Hogwarts. To see yourself mirrored in the eyes of a lover is to see yourself as you _should_ be: it had made her strong. It had made her capable of bending to the agonies of the pain that followed, as the war broke in around their ears, made her bend rather than break in the torrent of it.

But all that love, all that fleeting, fumbling, flimsy peace, had done little to prepare her for married life with Severus Snape.

What a nightmare those first weeks had been, like a pool of black tar and she was drowning in it. Not that Severus was cruel to her. Oh, no, nothing like that. But cold. So very, very cold. No doubt he wouldn't have so much as even touched her if he'd had a say in the matter. But there was no say, for neither of them. There were responsibilities to be met. Duties. Yes, that was what had been the most frightening of it all: that her body in another's hands could have become an unwelcome duty. And she'd lain like stone.

How was it possible that she had found affection, the echo of love sounding in the depths, in the middle of a broken down house that she'd hated, with death all around her - and yet in the security of her beloved Hogwarts she had ended up an object of bitter resentment?

Still, what more could she have expected under the circumstances? It wasn't as if Severus had wanted to marry her.

But Harry had died, and what choice had he had?


	5. The Gifts He'd Given

_A/N: How is Dumbledore there, you cry? Well, seriously people! If I've resurrected Snape and killed Harry, I think I can have Dumbledore without too much of a problem, don't you? And besides... I just couldn't imagine this conversation with any of the other characters, so it had to be._

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**Chapter Five: The Gifts He'd Given**

"You both understand," Albus Dumbledore had said in that papery voice of his, "That the law is extremely clear on this point. It is of course also extremely ancient and practically obsolete, rather like myself―" he'd given a little chuckle, then shook his head as though disappointed in his own manners, and continued soberly, "In fact I doubt that anyone has called it into use for a good many years. However, the Ministry of Magic remains eager to prove that they are actually achieving something and with Lord Voldemort vanquished they are suddenly faced with the uncomfortable task of putting a civil-war-torn country back together again and thus…" His blue eyes, tired and without a single twinkle to be seen, had settled upon Hermione. "And you, my dear, are Harry Potter's widow. You are a conspicuous case for them to work upon."

Hermione _hadn't_ understood. She'd stared at him, her brows slightly drawn downwards, then glanced at the ring on her finger. Unconsciously her other hand had risen to her pale throat, risen to wrap her fingers around Harry's ring where she wore it on a chain at her neck. The ring was about all that had been left after the Battle, after he and the Dark Lord had―

She'd swallowed, dropped her hands and said crisply, "I'm sorry, Professor, but I don't see what the new Ministry's difficulties have to do with myself and Professor Snape." All she'd wanted was to be left alone. Not even a week had passed, damn them.

It was the Potions Master who had answered, his eyes glittering like dark tunnels and his voice cut with ice. "I believe what the Headmaster is trying, and _failing_, to explain, Miss Granger, is that by law I am required to marry you." Unlike everyone else, Snape seemed incapable of calling her Hermione Potter. She supposed he was of the opinion that there had been enough Potters in the world already. That, and he didn't give a damn about other people's sensibilities.

"I – I beg your pardon?" She'd started from one man to the other. If it hadn't been Snape, if it had been some other person speaking, she might have thought he were joking, pulling her chain, having her on with some kind of hateful black humour. But it _was_ Snape. So she'd looked back at Dumbledore, her shadowed eyes staring from a face that had grown too thin, demanding a response through her silence.

The old wizard nodded. "Indeed, Professor Snape has put it succinctly as usual. You, Hermione, are Harry Potter's widow. Harry died without issue, which is to say, without children. It is also true that Professor Snape had quite publically - well, not _so _publically, I will admit - proclaimed himself to be the boy's protector. The fact that he―" Dumbledore halted tactfully.

Snape glared rigidly at a bookshelf. "The fact tat Potter died while in my care means that the duty to provide you with offspring falls to me. It is a ridiculous law. It is so old it is positively senile. It is even more preposterous when considering that we are dealing with a marriage lasting such a short time and constructed between a witch and a wizard who were barely even of age. But it remains the law. And this farce of a government is eager to draw the attention away from their own incapacity with dealing with peacetime governing and thus..."

"But that's INSANE!" she'd shouted at him, at Dumbledore, at the government who obviously didn't give a damn about her, at Harry who had gone and got himself killed and left her alone. "That's positively - positively Old Testamental! We aren't in the dark ages anymore, you can't make laws forcing people to marry and worse, to force them to have kids that's―" She flounded in search of an expletive foul enough to express her sentiments, gave up, and continued furiously, "And it's hardly Professor Snape's fault that Harry died! It was Voldemort's magic that killed him, residuals from the Battle that we didn't notice in the euphoria that Harry had slain the Dark Lord, didn't notice until it was too late and then - Harry _chose _his fate, Professor." Beneath her rage there was the glimmering of bitter tears.

"I know, Hermione," whispered Dumbledore, "He welcomed it with open arms in fact and if anyone is to blame for that it is I. I, who schooled him for all these years in the way of becoming a hero and worse, a martyr."

Snape, who had remained silent, turned suddenly snapped, "You always did play games, Dumbledore. But none of this changes the law. Believe me when I say I have already sought for every loophole I could_. The law stands_."

The law stood. It hadn't mattered what she'd felt. It hadn't mattered that she didn't care about hypothetical offspring. Nothing had mattered but the Ministry's need to look as though it were doing something, anything. It hadn't worked as they had hoped, of course – her teary face in the photographs and Snape's black furrowed brow on the front of the _Daily Prophet_ hadn't exactly been the kind of PR that the government had sought to solicit. The Minister of Magic had fallen at the next elections. But by then, Hermione had already passed from being the child bride of her best friend to being the resented dependant of a man who loathed himself for her best friend's death. By then, it had been too late.

How long would Harry hang between them, as present as if his ghost had come to haunt the dungeons, as visible as if he'd never died, as though Hermione were a bigamist?

Dumbledore had explained to Hermione about Lily Evans one evening six months after their wedding, when the Headmaster had found her crying in the astronomy tower. That was when she'd stopped loathing Severus and had begun to start wanting to fix him instead; to make him happy if she could. And time had passed. Time had passed and the obliged child had been born and somehow the plans that they'd both had about separating once the legal requirements had been fulfilled never came to pass. Because despite it all, somewhere along the way beneath the mutual resentment, they had become united in their hate for what had been imposed upon them, and at some point that unity had merged into companionship. And in Kitty, with her Snape eyes peering out from behind bushy Granger hair, the companionship had begun its slow path towards a deeper kind of love.

But Harry still hung here unspoken in their hearts. Because Severus would never forgive himself for not having kept Lily's son alive. Because he'd loathed Harry and had been forced to take the boy's wife like a hand-me-down. Because after he'd started to love said wife himself, he'd hated the fact that Potter had had her first. Because it made rage bubble in him whenever he thought about the fact that his daughter was growing up with Potter's last name. And worst of all, because he knew that everything that made his life happy, everything that he held dear, he owed to that stupid boy going and getting himself killed. Severus hated being in debt and this was a debt he knew he would never be able to pay back.

Hermione understood all that. She lay in her husband's arms, watching him sleep, and breathed in the salty smell of his skin and the love that they'd shared and wondered if the day would ever come when he would be able to look upon Harry as she did. Look at him not with resentment but with thanks for the gifts that he'd given.

Hope is a steadfast companion.


End file.
